Beef's on the menu as the bodybuilders strut their stuff

No one kicked sand in my face in my younger days. Otherwise, who knows, I might have enrolled in a Charles Atlas programme and become one of the beefcakes who have been preening themselves in the bodybuilding competition.

The Al-Dana Sports Club on the outskirts of Doha has never seen the likes of these guys. Of course, it's men only because female bodybuilding was not included, undoubtedly because it was a step too far for our Islamic hosts.

But there is a certainly hypocrisy at work here. Beach volleyball features similarly skimpily clad female athletes performing before an all-male audience - one guy even said he had left his wives at home because he didn't want to expose them to such decadence. But bodybuilding has barred the female form.

Games spokesman Ahmed Abdulla Al Khulaifi is at a loss to explain why there are no female beefcakes in the competition. 'I will get back to you,' he mutters when asked at the daily briefing.

I didn't ask him if he had witnessed the opening night of flex and grind. The 'athletes' go through a grotesque form of dance, tightening their pecs and lats, as a panel of judges nod their heads, no doubt impressed with the cuts that line one competitor's mid-riff, or the bulging biceps and taut triceps of another.

Mohammed Faraj, 36, is one of the fans who watches with an embarrassed look on his face. Discomfort seems to be the most common emotion among the spectators as they watch their fellow humans, pumped up like overripe fruit, go through their moves.

'I have been training for half a year for this event. I've spent every day doing sessions in the gym in the morning and evening,' says Hong Kong's Andy Wong Kwong-sun, a competitor in the under-65kg category. Despite sporting a purple mohawk and matching briefs, he fails to impress the judges.